Gates at D4: A Reality Acquisition Device

The Wall Street Journal's fourth annual "D: All Things Digital" (D4) conference opened last night, with what has become a traditional discussion with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, moderated by the Journal's Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. Although he didn't...

The Wall Street Journal's fourth annual "D: All Things Digital" (D4) conference opened last night, with what has become a traditional discussion with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, moderated by the Journal's Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.

Although he didn't make any major announcements, Gates expounded on a number of subjects, ranging from Windows Vista to Google to mobile phones, which he described in part as "reality acquisition devices."

On Vista, he said did expect it to ship in January according to previously announced schedule. He said that Microsoft was working on a lot of areas within Vista, and that security was probably the biggest of those. Still he pointed out that most users wouldn't really notice this. "When you don't see (security), you're happy," he said.

He said he though that client operating systems still had a long way to go. Over time, he said operating systems needed to add features to make them see, listen, understand handwriting better, etc.

Gates did not demonstrate Vista, but did bring up a member of the Office 2007 team to demonstrate that product, which he said was a little ahead of Vista in terms of schedule. In Office, they showed things like the ribbon bar user interface, new formatting features in Word, new graphics features in PowerPoint and new charting in Excel. As I've said before, this is very impressive.

Asked about competition from web-based services, he said local processing still made sense, with the web a great place for storing, backup, collaboration, and roaming.

Regarding Google, which Gates identified a year ago as a major competitor, he acknowledged that Microsoft has lost share in the search market in the past year, but said he viewed it as a "five year trek". He said most of the innovations in search this year came from smaller sites, like A9, Ask.com, and the vertical engines, not from Google.

There was a long discussion about a much-rumored handheld coming from the Xbox group that might compete with the iPod or the portable gaming machines. Gates wouldn't announce anything, but said he thought there was plenty of growth yet to come in the handheld space.

In the gaming market, he said in the last generation, the PlayStation 2 was earlier, less expensive, and smaller than the original Xbox, but in this generation the Xbox 360 has all those attributes compared with the PlayStation 3. And he described online gaming as the big bet.

This led to a discussion of the "component model" vs the "device model" with Gates saying that the idea of splitting the OS from the hardware had driven the PC model to sales of 225 million this year; and said he believed this model also applied to phones.

He talked about how mobile phones were getting more features, and made the some what comment that they were becoming "reality acquisition devices" - which drew a puzzled reaction from Swisher, Mossberg, and much of the audience. He explained that he meant that eventually phones would be able to tell you things about the place you are, such as its location on the map, history, which of your friends had been there, etc.

In response to audience questions, he talked about how Ray Ozzie was taking a lead role in the "Live" project of creating online tools, and said he and Ozzie were working well together. He said his own title of "Chief Software Architect" was strange, and people should think of him as the chairman of Microsoft. And he talked about how his philanthropy was expanded to work on the problems of the urban slums in the third world, including such things as microfinance, crop development, and urban planning.

Michael J. Miller's Forward Thinking Blog: forwardthinking.pcmag.com
Michael J. Miller is chief information officer at Ziff Brothers Investments, a private investment firm. From 1991 to 2005, Miller was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine, responsible for the editorial direction, quality and presentation of the world's largest computer publication.
Until late 2006, Miller was the Chief Content Officer for Ziff Davis Media, responsible for overseeing the editorial positions of Ziff Davis's magazines, websites, and events. As Editorial Director for Ziff Davis Publishing since 1997, Miller took an active role in...
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